Green Day Play The Tonight Show, Confirm American Idiot HBO Movie
On their new album Revolution Radio, onetime pop-radio rulers Green Day are intent on returning to their roots, sounding as much like an early-’90s Gilman Street bash-punk band as a group of aging major-label rock stars can possibly sound in 2016. And they’re doing pretty well at it! Case in point: Behold the band’s fast, mean, fun performance on last night’s episode of The Tonight Show, where they knocked out “Bang Bang,” the album’s first single and opening track. As soon as they got done playing, drummer Tre Cool charged out into the crowd to hand out vinyl copies of the new album, a nice touch.
But even in their pared-down current form, Green Day haven’t abandoned the grand, over-the-top ambition that they showed off on their crazy-huge 2004 concept album American Idiot. The band already turned that album into a Broadway show, and it’s long been rumored that it’ll become a made-for-HBO movie soon as well. Talking to NME, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong confirmed those plans, saying, “We’ve got a green light from HBO, and the script is currently going through a couple of rewrites here and there, so I’m not sure when exactly we’re going to start shooting, but it’s definitely all systems go at the moment.” Apparently, Armstrong will play the Broadway-show character St. Jimmy.
Here’s that Tonight Show performance:
Revolution Radio is out now on Reprise.